Explosion of six-figure salaries in fed gov't during recession

Captain Ed has comments and links at Hot Air:

Bureaucracy is the real recession-proof industry. The numbers are mind-boggling. In 18 months, the number of federal employees making over $100K have increased 46%. The number making over $150K has more than doubled.

It’s not as if they’ve been asked to do more with less, either. In the first six months of the year, the federal government was adding 10,000 jobs per month, and over the recession had grown the ranks of bureaucrats by 9.8%. The private sector, during that same period, shed 7.3 million jobs to contract 6.3%.

Here’s the fun fact of the day from USA Today:

When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.

Got that? Seventeen hundred employees at DoT make $170,000 per year. Eighteen months ago, there was one.

UPDATE: Reason has a related post - The Class War: Public Employees vs. the Rest of Us.